What to expect at your first visit

Your first visit

The Questionnaire

Before your first consultation you will be asked to complete a detailed questionnaire. If there is time we will send you the forms by email or post, but if you have been unable to complete the paperwork please arrive at least 15 minutes before your appointment time.

The questionnaire helps the chiropractor to direct the case history.

As chiropractic doesn't just treat symptoms, it is important to gain as much potentially relevant information about you.

We need to gain insights into what may have caused your problem or be perpetuating it. Knowledge of your work, your hobbies and your lifestyle may be particularly useful in providing a background to why you are suffering and how to reduce the problem.

Factors such as when and why the symptoms first appeared, what makes them worse and what relives them will be essential.

It will be necessary for you to note aspects of your medical history in order to look at medical conditions that may be causing or adding to your problem.

We need information to help select the techniques that will best suit you and to generate the most relevant lifestyle advice (whether it is related to work, rest or play). We need it to design the best exercise or rehabilitation programme for you as an individual and to help maintain your fitness and health at an optimum level when we have got rid of your symptoms. Even if you are symptom free and need life-style or preventive advice, the questionnaire is a useful tool to help guide the chiropractor in the right direction.

The Case History

Using the questionnaire as a base point, we shall spend time developing a case history.

This interview stage usually provides most of the information that will lead to a working diagnosis.

It helps rule out some conditions and highlights others that could explain your symptoms.

The answers you give in your questionnaire and case history help us to select appropriate examination procedures for your condition.

We can then hone in on what is likely to be causing your problem and test (confirm or dismiss) the theories we have built up from the earlier stages of the process.

Once the case history has been completed we are ready to move to the physical examination.

You will be asked to undress to your underwear in a private cubicle or behind a curtain in the treatment room.

Women are given a robe that opens at the back to change into for the examination. If they need to wait outside the treatment room men and women will also be offered a dressing gown.